In this current environment, price targets age about as well as leftover milk. If there were a chart metric for panic locking, the benchmark would be the BPM of LO’s and real estate agents watching rates forge higher. Meanwhile, the 10yr might as well be correlated to a herd of cats with a garden hose. Forget fundamentals, the only thing the market cares about right now is the belief or disbelief in the word “transitory.”   The timing of all this is all but impeccable (cue sa

Mortgage professionals tend to watch the same handful of indicators when thinking about rate movement. The 10-year Treasury. Mortgage-backed securities. Inflation data. Fed commentary. But another signal may be quietly emerging in the background: prediction markets. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow participants to trade contracts tied to real-world outcomes. Instead of buying a stock or bond, traders buy contracts tied to questions like: Will the Federal Reserve rai

We do not have the right to criticize this industry if we are unwilling to invest in improving it. Not in private conversations. Not in conference hallways. Not in boardrooms. If we benefit from the infrastructure of mortgage banking, from its standards, its frameworks, its collective trust, then we carry a responsibility to help sustain it. I earned my Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB) designation in 2005. The CMB is not simply a credential. It is a professional standard recog

I came across a piece in National Mortgage Professional  last week about Zillow partnering with Google to integrate its home-buying content into NotebookLM. This move builds on Zillow’s upstream strategy after integrating with ChatGPT  at the end of 2025. If you have not played with NotebookLM yet, it is Google’s AI research tool. You give it sources and it becomes an expert on those sources. Zillow is now feeding it its home-buying content library. Guides on preapproval, aff

Studying the mortgage industry for over 35 years, I’ve learned: the winners don’t just think better. They move faster. We talk a lot about rates, inventory, consolidation, and AI. All important. But none of it matters if you’re slow to act. Speed is no longer a tactic. It’s a discipline. Consumer direct channels figured this out years ago with one simple concept: speed to lead. The data is overwhelming. The faster you respond to an inquiry, the higher your conversion rate. Mi

Two weeks ago, we talked about "vibe coding" as a mindset shift for loan officers. Not learning to code. Not becoming a software company. Simply using modern AI tools to turn plain-English ideas into live, useful resources faster than traditional marketing workflows allow. This week, I want to make it tangible. I built a live consumer-facing page using nothing more than an AI assistant and our CRM. No developer. No design sprint. No long intake process. The goal wasn't to cre

Politics, policy, and a market trying to recalibrate after a burst of volatility were the names of the game this week. President Trump’s announcement that he intends to nominate former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve Chair was the largest headline. While Warsh is a known quantity with prior Fed experience and deep ties to Wall Street, the nomination introduced renewed debate about Fed independence, especially as the Supreme Court considers

There’s a reason conversations about the Innovation Investment Fee (IIF) often start with confusion rather than conviction. One of the most common, and most honest, things I hear from executives is this: “I don’t really understand what MISMO does, let alone why I should care enough to pay.”  That observation sits at the root of the challenge. When standards work well, they’re invisible. They don’t show up in sales meetings or earnings calls. They don’t have a logo on the borr

Mortgage marketing has turned into a speed game. In a purchase market, the advantage goes to the loan officer who can ship helpful things fast. The LOs winning attention are not always the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who can launch something useful quickly, test it in the real world, and improve it without waiting on a vendor queue. That is where “vibe coding” comes in. The label is new, but the idea is simple: you describe what you want in plain English,

The narrative this week was dominated by policy uncertainty rather than concrete action, beginning with President Trump’s long-teased $200 billion mortgage-backed securities purchase plan, which arrived at Davos with few details and little immediate market impact. Mortgage rates ended up less than 10-basis points from below pre-announcement levels, underscoring the growing consensus among economists and Fed officials that housing affordability is constrained by supply, not fi

For consumers paying attention to housing news lately, it probably feels like the industry and policymakers are throwing everything they have at the affordability problem. 50-year amortization mortgages. Penalty-free access to 401(k) funds for down payments. Prepayment penalties reintroduced as a way to lower interest rates. And now, proposals from the White House to ban large investors from purchasing homes. Each of these ideas has made headlines over the last several months

Last week, Donald Trump floated a proposal that immediately grabbed headlines: a one-year federal cap on credit card interest rates at 10%. Markets reacted quickly. Bank stocks sold off. Trade groups pushed back. And the debate over consumer affordability versus credit availability reignited almost overnight.(Source: CNBC – https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/10/trump-calls-for-one-year-cap-on-credit-card-interest-rates-at-10percent.html ) At first glance, this looks like a story sq

We're at quite the intersection of political rhetoric, market structure, and stubborn economic reality. The headline catalyst this week came from President Trump, who asserted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now worth “an absolute fortune” and directed his representatives to pursue $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchases to push mortgage rates lower. The announcement was light on details and heavy on uncertainty, raising immediate questions about legal

As we prepare to enter a new year, and a new era defined by artificial intelligence, interoperability, and accelerating change, it’s a privilege to welcome the 2026 MISMO Board of Directors . This Board reflects the depth, diversity, and leadership required at a pivotal moment for our industry. MISMO exists by the industry and for the industry . Its work quietly supports every loan, every day, across origination, servicing, capital markets, and the technology ecosystem that b

With little economic data on the calendar this week, and many people away from their desks, bond markets traded in a tight range absent any major headlines. The release of the December FOMC Minutes reinforced a familiar theme: most policymakers still expect rate cuts if inflation continues to cool, though a meaningful minority favors holding rates steady for longer. Markets barely reacted, with odds of no change at the late-January meeting still around 85 percent. President T

What this year actually taught us about mortgage, momentum, and what matters next. I’ve been around this industry long enough to know the difference between a “tough year” and a turning year. 2025 was the latter. Not because rates suddenly got friendly. Not because volume magically returned. But because the rules of engagement finally changed in plain sight. This was the year where pretending the old playbook still worked became harder than rewriting it. The year the middle d

If you spent 2025 waiting for the market to “come roaring back,” you probably left disappointed. This was not 2020 or 2021. It also was not 2022’s hangover. But it was not the free-fall mood of 2023, either. 2025 was the year the industry proved it can operate in a normal-rate environment, even if “normal” now means a 30-year fixed that starts with a 6. As of last week, Freddie Mac had the average 30-year fixed at 6.21% . ( AP News ) The market did not need a miracle to impro

This week marked another decisive step in the mortgage industry’s structural reset, led by United Wholesale Mortgage’s agreement to acquire Two Harbors in a $1.3 billion all-stock deal. While framed publicly as an MSR and portfolio-loan play, the transaction fits squarely into a broader consolidation wave reshaping the mortgage value chain. Following Rocket’s acquisition spree and Bayview’s combination of servicing, origination, and technology platforms, UWM’s move advances i